Apple has just published a MobileMe to iCloud transition FAQ. Of note, there has been a lot of confusion as to whether or not iCloud apps would be accessible on the web. We had previously heard that yes, they would for sure be available via web apps on icloud.com (similar to the ones currently found on me.com) set to launch at an undisclosed date in the future. But plenty still refused to believe that. So today, Apple has answered the question once and for all. Sure enough:

Will I be able to access iCloud services on the web?
Yes. Web access to iCloud Mail, Contacts, Calendar, and Find My iPhone will be available at icloud.com this fall.

So there you go.

Other tidbits from the FAQ are things you probably already knew. If you currently have MobileMe, you service has been extended through June 30, 2012. At that time, MobileMe will cease to exist and you will have to use iCloud services. Also, Gallery and iDisk cease to exist in iCloud.

The news more people may care about is iWeb. Yes, it too is going away for sure, Apple confirms in this document. So what about sites you have built are hosted on MobileMe? Apple suggests you read this document to help you transition your sites to another web hosting service before the June 30, 2012 end date.

One thing not explicitly mentioned: viewing your photos on the web. While Gallery is going away, Photo Stream is taking over and from what we’re hearing, the decision has not yet been made about whether to publish those to a location on icloud.com or not. Stay tuned.

This is a fantastically fun story. Former England Rugby captain Will Carling’s iPad was stolen, yeah, but he had tracking software on there. What followed was a gripping tale, told on Twitter, of Carling’s attempts to hunt down his missing iPad using MobileMe.

Hold onto your hats.

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So what exactly is Strobe? GigaOm’s Om Malik had a nice interview with Jolley back in July after he left Apple to talk about the project. Essentially, Strobe is a company built to help developers around the web code mobile applications with the SproutCore framework, which again, Jolley created. The idea is to use JavaScript and HTML5 to create touch-based apps which run as if they’re built using native code. The best known examples to date are some of the MobileMe apps and iWork.com, which Jolley helped drive the development of at Apple.

After founding Strobe, Jolley quickly teamed up with two Ruby on Rails core team members, Yehuda Katz (also a jQuery core team member) and Carl Lerche to get the project rolling. The company currently has nine people and will expand to twelve by the end of January, Jolley says.

He notes that while he put a small amount of money into the company at its inception, he expected to work on Strobe for six months before looking to raise a proper round of funding. But there was so much interest, primarily from media companies, that just four months in they’ve closed this $2.5 million Series A round led by O’Reilly AlphaTech and Hummer Winblad. O’Reilly AlphaTech’s Bryce Roberts shared his thoughts on Sprout this morning on his personal blog. “We’re entering an new world of mobile applications, sensors, form factors and connectivity unlike any we’ve seen before. I believe it is a market too big for any one company, one device or one app store to control,” he writes.

Of Apple, Jolley has this to say:

Apple supports two modes of distributing apps.  You can use the app store, or you can use the Safari browser.  Both modes support using HTML5 technologies.  There are hundreds of apps in the app store already doing this.

Our platform will support this same model.  It will make it much easier to create these apps using HTML5 that can be distributed through the app store or the browser.

So the idea is to create HTML5 apps wrapped in native code to get them to run on many of the popular devices now. That’s enticing to a lot of developers, and particularly among media companies, because it means they can code the majority of their apps once with a native app-like framework then spread them to the various popular app stores quickly.

Sprout’s biggest competitor in this space right now is clearly Sencha, which raised a huge $14 million round from Sequoia over the summer. “We’re watching them very closely obviously,” Jolley says. “Right now, we are mostly focused on building the best platform we can.  We raised the right amount of money for what we need and have more customers than we can handle so we are happy.  This market is growing really fast; I think there will be a lot of room for us to differentiate over time,” he continues.

Right now, the plan is to use the new funds to hire more developers and to push towards the release of major new features for the platform in Q1 2011. They’re currently working with a number of big media companies as pilot customers, Jolley says.

Jolley is particular enthused about one device: the iPad. “iPad is important because it is a catalyst that will make mobile web apps really explode.  It is really an awesome web device.  In fact, that’s the primary thing people use it for.  Because of that, mobile web technology is on developers radar like never before.  There are a lot of devs now thinking about building HTML5 apps for iPhone and Android phones because they also have to target the iPad,” he says.

You see, with iOS 4.2, Apple is making one part of MobileMe available for free: Find My iPhone/iPad. Users will be able to sign up for a free MobileMe account for the first time in order to use the service, which works on iOS devices in the form of an app. However, those users signing up for free accounts will not be able to use the other MobileMe services without paying the regular $99-a-year price, we’ve confirmed with Apple.

Find My iPhone/iPad allows users to remotely find a missing or misplaced device by using location based services to locate it. You can send messages to it, tell it to make noises so you can find it in your home, remote lock it, or remote wipe it (if it is stolen).

Just among people I know, the service has saved many an iDevice from being left at a venue, or being buried for months in a couch cushion. One friend, who shall remain unnamed, even found their’s in a bush outside where they may or may not have been using the restroom. There are also the stories of the feature recapturing iDevices from thieves. And now that it’s free, would-be robbers better think twice before climbing in your windows, and snatching your iPads up.

As the phones in our pockets become our second computers, it will become increasingly important to sync data between the two. Not just emails, but contacts, calendars, photos, music, apps, browser bookmarks, files, and more. Nearly every Web phone out there comes with at least some sort of rudimentary syncing app. Apple has MobileMe, Nokia has Ovi, Palm has Synergy, Blackberry has Internet Services, and Microsoft has My Phone.

An open-source competitor to all of these is Funambol. The startup evaluated all of the syncing services and scored them based on criteria such as how many kinds of data each one supports, cost, usability, and number of supported devices. (Full study embedded at bottom of post). It came up with a score for each out of a maximum of 40. Naturally enough, Funambol scored the highest, but if you throw that out you end up with the list below (with accompanying scores).

Nokia Ovi – 28
Apple MobileMe – 27
Palm Synergy – 26
Microsoft My Phone – 26
Vodafone Zyb – 26
Google Sync – 23
BlackBerry IS – 21
Yahoo! Mobile – 21
AT&T – 19
T-Mobile – 19
Verizon – 19

As you can see, Nokia’s Ovi edged out Apple’s MobileMe, but that was because it offers a free version, supports more phones (although, they are all Nokia), and can sync photos with Flickr. Despite MobileMe’s early hiccups, Apple seems to have fixed the problems. MobileMe supports a lot of different data types (email, photos, contacts, calendar) and gets high marks for usability.

Palm, Microsoft, and Vodafone’s Zyb all tie for third place. And Blackberry has a poor showing in fifth place after Google Sync.

Blackberry’s service is the most expensive at $20 a month,and it only syncs e-mail. MobileMe is about half that price, but still not cheap enough. Nearly three quaters of the syncing apps are free.

http://viewer.docstoc.com/
FunambolCloud Sync Report –

Update: The Skybox service, renamed My Phone, is based on technology from Mobicomp, a company Microsoft acquired last June. It has nothing to do with Live Mesh.

It looks like Microsoft is finally ready to roll out the mobile version of Windows Live Mesh, it data syncing service that competes with Apple’s MobileMe (which ran into problems at launch). Live Mesh was first announced last April, and currently only supports Windows PCs and a Webtop in the cloud. Mac and mobile versions are shown to be “coming soon.”

Tom Warren at Neowin reports that Microsoft is set to launch a mobile syncing product called SkyBox at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February. This builds on earlier reports based on job postings. SkyBox sounds exactly like Live Mesh (it syncs pictures, calendar, contacts, emails and text messages between your mobile phone and the cloud):

“SkyBox” is a service for users to sync a phones information with the web. Microsoft will be offering automatic backup and restore services, access and management of phone data and provide easy communication and sharing with others. The service will also allow syncing of contacts, email/SMS, calendar items and pictures into the cloud, similar to Apple’s MobileMe. The difference from Apple’s offering is Microsoft could be set to offer this out to non Windows Mobile devices.

Live Mesh seems to be working best with HTC handsets right now. iPhones, Blackberries, Palms, Nokia and Motorola phones all seem to have some issues. Maybe Microsoft can resolve these before SkyBox launches.

In addition to SkyBox, Microsoft is set to launch two other services as well, according to Warren. They are SkyLine (an enterprise version of SkyBox that plays nice with Exchange) and SkyMarket (an app store for Windows Mobile apps). Live Mesh won the Best Technology Innovation prize at this year’s Crunchies.

Sharpcast has raised a $10 million round from existing investors Sigma Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Selby Venture. This brings the total raised to $26.5 million. The round is described as a “Series AA,” which implies that it was done at the same or lower valuation as the original Series A back in March, 2006. I’ve asked the company for clarification on that. Update: It was indeed a down round (i.e., at a lower valuation). CEO Laura Yecies confirms:

This series is labeled ‘Series AA’ because of the terms, participating investors and the overall recapitalization structure. It is a ‘down round’, but given the economic conditions at the time of the previous round (March 2006) and the current financial climate, we’re very happy with such a very strong vote of confidence from our investors.

Sharpcast offers file-syncing through its SugrarSync service, which syncs data across multiple devices (PCs, Macs, iPhones, Windows Mobile phones) and the cloud. For instance, using its iPhone app a user is able to view all the photos on her desktop if they are in a SugarSync folder.

Syncing is becoming a serious technology trend as people split up their digital lives across devices and the Web. It is one of the promises of Windows Live Mesh from Microsoft, which won the Crunchie for best technology innovation. Apple offers syncing through its MobileMe service. Startups like Sharpcast and Dropbox are looking to carve out their own niche here with both free and subscription services.

Sharpcast’s SugarSync is a subscription service, with prices ranging from $25 to $250 a year. The vast majority of the 20,000 people who have signed up since launch last March are paying $50 a year. Using back-of-the-envelope math, at $50 per user, that implies a $1 million run-rate. CEO Laura Yecies tells me she will use the $10 million to ramp up marketing and keep developing the product.

Yecies is going up against both Apple and Microsoft here. I asked if that worries her. She responds:

With MobileMe it is a very Apple centric solution, but not effective for people who are cross-platform. Live Mesh is still much more talk than actual software, but it will probably be more Microsoft-centric. We have a solution that is actually working now. Those companies have not been successful from a technical point of view. I don’t grant them automatic success.

Trust me, both Microsoft and Apple will figure this out. In the meantime, Sharpcast can build a nice little business and maybe get acquired.

Say what you will about MobileMe, but there’s at least one iPhone owner out there glad that he plunked down $100 bucks for it. Not only did it lead to the return of his stolen iPhone, but it left him with a tale for the e-ages.

Here’s how it went down, according to TUAW: One day, a gent named Rob went to the dry cleaners, and somehow managed to walk away one whole iPhone lighter. Disappointed at his loss but sure it was gone for good, Rob cruised over to the Apple store to pick up a new one. He activated iPhone #2, plugged in his MobileMe account info, and went about his business.

The next day, Rob noticed that a few new contacts had shown up on the second handset. Apparently, the thief hadn’t thought to brush up on his smartphone syncing technologies before walking off with someone else’s stuff. When the thief added his buddies numbers to the phone, MobileMe automatically synced the changes, in turn adding them to Rob’s new iPhone. Rob started ringing up the anomalous numbers; a few calls later (including one to the police), they’d tracked down the handset’s self-imposed new owner. Later that evening, it was back in Rob’s possession.

Not unlike many tales of the internet, this one ends with eBay, where he’s selling the recovered handset in hopes of “offsetting the expense of [his] new iPhone, as well as the $150 speeding ticket [he] got rushing down to the Apple Store that night to purchase the new phone”. Could it be a tall tale for the sake of driving eyes to his eBay auction? Sure – but even if it is, he deserves the link for creativity.

Apple, however, has created a dead simple way for spammers to easily spider their idisk property to retrieve the entire MobileMe user name list. And each of those usernames can be converted to an email address by adding @me.com or @mac.com to the end of it.

Here’s how it works. Every MobileMe user gets a public idisk file sharing site where they can post files for their public or private use. It’s simple to set the page to private, but it still shows the username if you to to the page. An example of a bad username: idisk.mac.com/mehmehmeh-Public. Here’s a good one: idisk.mac.com/steve-Public (That’s Steve Jobs’ account). There is no way as a user to hide or delete your public folder. If you are a MobileMe customer, you have one.

Gathering the entire MobileMe username list, and therefore email list, via a simple dictionary attack is trivial.

Apple knows about the problem but insists it isn’t an issue because no one has complained publicly. An Apple representative said to one of our readers: “We’ve never had a complaint from a customer about people spamming them because of their iDisk public folder name. There is no way to remove your account name from the iDisk folders. I’m very sorry.”

So here’s our public complaint. The bad guys already know about this. Your engineers shouldn’t have designed the product without thinking this through. Please fix it.

MobileMe has stunk on ice, so to regain users’ trust Apple will give them two free months of service. Anyone with an account active as of August 19 at 00:00 PDT (note Apple’s correct use of timestamp, PDT) is eligible for the two free months.

Apple is giving away the free months “to express appreciation for [its] members’ patience as [it] continue to improve the service.”

It’s a shame MobileMe has been so buggy, since push for the everyman (because every man needs push) should well be a hit.

Below you’ll find the entire “MobileMe launch wasn’t very good” e-mail Steve Jobs sent to employees. He sent it on Monday, claims Ars.

Team,

The launch of MobileMe was not our finest hour. There are several things we could have done better:

– MobileMe was simply not up to Apple’s standards – it clearly needed more time and testing.

– Rather than launch MobileMe as a monolithic service, we could have launched over-the-air syncing with iPhone to begin with, followed by the web applications one by one – Mail first, followed 30 days later (if things went well with Mail) by Calendar, then 30 days later by Contacts.

– It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store. We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.

We are taking many steps to learn from this experience so that we can grow MobileMe into a service that our customers will love. One step that I can share with you today is that the MobileMe team will now report to Eddy Cue, who will lead all of our internet services – iTunes, the App Store and, starting today, MobileMe. Eddy’s new title will be Vice President, Internet Services and he will now report directly to me.

The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services. And learn we will. The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious, and we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year.

Steve

Now let’s all leave Steve alone.

Steve Jobs has admitted that the MobileMe launch was “not up to Apple’s standards.” That’s in reference to all the problems the service has had since it launched last month.

Jobs admitted as much in an internal e-mail sent to Apple employees, which Ars Technica got a hold of. He said MobileMe shouldn’t have been launched on the same day as iPhone 3G, Firmware 2.0 and the App Store. Rather, Apple could have launched it one service at a time—on the first day it could have launched over-the-air; the next week could have been push e-mail; and so on.

Another bit of fallout: the MobileMe development team will now report to the same guy in charge of iTunes and the App Store.

Good to see Apple recognize how poor MobileMe has been, and even better to see that it’s trying to fix it.

If you’re been part of the 1% of MobileMe subscribers unable to actually use their MobileMe accounts, the MobileMe Status blog has good news for you. From a post made yesterday morning: “We have completed restoring Mail service, including historical messages, to all of the 1% of affected members.”

If your MobileMe set-up is still all kinds of broken, they’ve set up a special chat line just for you. They do ask that use of the chat room is reserved for Mail issues, so try to avoid using it for dating advice or Kirk/Picard debates.

Last but not least, they’ve done away with that nasty bug where contacts and calendar data had been disappearing off of iPhones and iPod Touches during over-the-air syncs. The data oughtta restore itself automatically – if it doesn’t, they’ve got a fix for you.

Steve Jobs has asked me to write a posting every other day or so to let everyone know what’s happening with MobileMe, and I’m working directly with the MobileMe group to ensure that we keep you really up to date. In the 14 days since we launched, it’s been a rocky road and we know the pain some people have been suffering. Be assured people here are working 24-7 to improve matters, and we’re going to favor getting you new info hot off the presses even if we have to post corrections or further updates later.

One issue we encountered was a mail outage affecting 1% of our members. Last Friday a serious problem with one of our mail servers blocked those members’ access to their MobileMe mail accounts. As of today a team was able to restore limited web access to those accounts so the affected members can use their browsers to read mail that has arrived since last Friday (though not before) as well as send and receive new mail. The team has already begun rolling out restoration of full access for all the accounts and expect to finish by the end of next week. We particularly regret to report the loss in the affected accounts of approximately 10% of the messages received between July 16 and July 18.

The day we launched MobileMe, we had a lot more traffic to our servers than we anticipated, with the result that access to the web versions of the MobileMe applications — Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Gallery, iDisk — was temporarily unavailable. We’ve since added server capacity and tuned our software to scale better — i.e. behave more gracefully when traffic spikes. The team has also fixed over 70 bugs including one that was preventing MobileMe IMAP mail folders from syncing correctly between the web app and Mac OS X Mail or Outlook, plus others correcting display issues in Calendar and in general enhancing the performance of our web apps.

We’ll post another update later this weekend to report on status and hopefully further progress.

And by people, I mean Philip Elmer-DeWitt over at Fortune’s technology blog, who wants to know who’s to blame for Apple’s misrepresented and messed up service. While both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times gave MobileMe negative (and maybe even worse than negative) reviews, calling for someone’s head, so shortly after Bastille day is a touch unnerving.

But Elmer-DeWitt has a point, in that even as Apple fixes one MobileMe glitch, (and apologizes) another glitch pops up right in its place (and another apology hasn’t always). And while hopefully most MobileMe users have at least gotten their money back, if not all their lost emails, a stiff apology and plea to their “loyal customers’ patience” may not be enough for Apple to keep the hounds at bay.

Is the word “Me” responsible for the problems with MobileMe? Labnol points out that that three major “me” initiatives – Windows Me, .me, and MobileMe all angered folks immediately and nearly failed – or did fail.

Consider Windows Me – flop – and the .me domain name. Both of these projects essentially withered on the vine and caused much damage to their respective creators. Is MobileMe next?

You rarely see buggy products from the iPhone inventors but Mobile Me (formerly .mac) is definitely one. Apple customers have lost thousands of important emails in the past few days while some did not have access to email for over a week thanks to this new cloud computing platform called Mobile Me.

As if you didn’t know, MobileMe hasn’t exactly launched without a hitch. Now Walt Mossberg, angel, has jumped atop the dog pile, and is refusing to recommend the service right now.

Mossberg cites too-infrequent-to-be-useful 15 sync times; sluggish performance; weird Outlook glitches; and so on.

Basically, MobileMe is a little buggy, which we’ve known for some time now. But now that Mossberg has said as much, all the more pressure is now on Apple to fix its $100 per year service.

AlleyInsider

Like most Mactards this morning I headed over to me.com to check out the new goodies. As I logged in I was presented with the MobileMe screen with an array of icons and my excitement, needless to say, was palpable and turgid. Sadly, however, my palpability deflated as I was then kicked back to the MobileMe intro page again and again, thwarted from enjoying MobileMe features. Words cannot describe my pain.

There is currently a new version of iTunes out – update your software in OS X and try to update in Windows to get it – and even the Apple TV is currently updating itself to support MobileMe. All of the pieces are there but clearly Apple is waiting for some sort of huge launch to release them. More news once we figure out what that huge launch is.

After

.Mac is reporting:

MobileMe Launch
7/9/2008, 6pm-12am PT

As part of the MobileMe launch, www.mac.com will be taken offline at 6pm PT on Wednesday, July 9th.

Members will be unable to access www.mac.com or any .Mac services during this time with the exception of .Mac Mail accessed via a desktop application, iPhone, or iPod touch.

MobileMe will be available as soon as possible during this maintenance window.

All of your current .Mac functions should work under Mobile Me although it’s not clear what’s happening to iWeb-based pages. You should be able to add your me.com address immediately although the push apps will not be enabled until the official launch.